As befits the official Formula One game, F1 2019 is certainly up there with the very best serious motorsport games. You won’t find one that looks better or provides more convincing car-handling, and yet its optional driver aids mean you don’t need to be as skilled as a real F1 driver to feel like the next Lewis Hamilton.

The game's difference-maker is entirely on the pitch – that new movement system. In multiplayer especially, where the absence of an all-knowing AI sees imperfect humans make repeated mistakes, it leads to slightly clumsier, boggier, slower matches. All the same, the change is only incremental, and doesn't ruin the game by any means.

It's frenetic and anarchic, but hardly the stuff that will convince you to buy a Wii U. Come on, Mr Miyamoto: let's have a proper Mario game for the Wii U. And a Zelda, and a Metroid, and a Pikmin, and a Donkey Kong and so on.

Telling Lies requires a deliberateness from its players that turns us from viewers to active plot participants. It’s a game that doesn’t hold your hand, and ultimately it’s down to you to decide the truth – another secret of a good mystery done well.

It's a blissful, beautiful thing to play.

The mystery of Crow Country was far richer than I had anticipated: the story is very completely drawn, and isn’t without a little levity and playfulness in the face of the darkness. I found the final sequences really bold – committed to the strange and unsettling all the way through, it certainly sticks the landing. Crow Country is far more than a pastiche of the giants of the PS1 era – it is a real triumph in and of itself.

Hitman is unquestionably the finest game in the series. It might be one of the best stealth games ever made.

While on-pitch matters between these two old foes are too close to call, Fifa’s breathtaking scope secures yet another silver pot for an already heaving trophy cabinet.

The result feels like being trapped in a Alejandro Jodorowsky movie – sinister, strange but beautiful and compelling. Everywhere you look there is some unsettling image, from skeletons lying on riverbanks, to bizarre children sitting alone in bus shelters and ferry canteens. The puzzles are shrewd and challenging, and the blocky discordant visuals make the whole environment feel like some sort of uncanny valley of the mind. If you’re looking for a very different sort of challenge, in a decidedly unnaturalistic open world, Grunn delivers much, much more than the sedate rural idyll it initially promises.

There’s no question that EA’s behemoth delivers bang for its megabucks.

Vanquish isn't going to change the face of gaming, but it's impressive to behold, satisfying to play (as long as you're reasonably hardcore) and shot through with humour (look out, for example, for the robots dancing to a ghetto-blaster which transforms into a mobile gun).

It might look slight, but there are hours of schemes, conversations and grisly deaths tucked away in this game. Broadening your choice of rulers takes some time, and even the same situations play out differently when Tyrion is in charge rather than Sansa, especially when you’re playing in character. It’s great fun to step into the unenviable position of Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, and a far more enjoyable way to pass the time until the HBO series’ conclusion than combing through the books again for clues.

F1 2010 is an extremely accomplished game, which blends enthusiast-level nerdiness seamlessly with an admirable playability, and even if it is a little on the brutal side, it deserves its place on the podium of great driving simulators.

It may not tear anyone completely away from Overwatch or Fortnite, but it offers a tactically rich alternative for players who want something with more grit, naturalism and sweaty peril. It is perhaps strange, perhaps even guilt-inducing, to take such pleasure from a game that wears its gung-ho military fetishism as a badge of honour, but as it stands this is the most enjoyable Call of Duty game for several years.

The time I have spent in its company has been engrossing, eerie, and unexpectedly thought-provoking. Horror provides a skewed and shadowy lens through which to view our lives and learn new things about ourselves and the world, and it has been expertly utilised here. With love as its focus, Fear the Spotlight will do more than scare you.

Unlike Assassin’s Creed, which always uses its historical settings as stages for its own eccentric stories, Ghost of Tsushima sticks so closely to the tropes and storylines of classic samurai fiction that it sometimes forgets to have a personality of its own. After I caught myself repeatedly checking my phone out of boredom during the story missions, I decided to abandon them entirely for a while and had a great time chasing foxes, bathing in hot springs, composing deeply average haiku and climbing mountains in search of a legendary bow instead. This is the most beautiful version of Japan ever conjured in code, and when running errands and slashing Mongol spearmen to bits gets tedious, you can always just drink in the view.

Graphically, Kid Icarus: Uprising is astonishing to behold, given that it was designed for the 3DS – which is just as well since at times, it gets incredibly busy in visual terms, and if it wasn't crisp and sharp to look at, it would get confusing. Overall, it feels fresh, original and exhilarating to play, and thanks to its off-the-chain level of bonkersness, it should appeal to young and old alike.

Like all great detective stories, Gunpoint isn't quick to give up its secrets. And like all great games, its elements build up into a system as alluring as it is surprising. You're left wanting more; which is a small criticism, but much higher praise.

Inspecting all that gaming gubbins up-close as a tiny robot gave me a new appreciation for the art of Sony’s hardware design. I’m not a technically minded gamer, and for me the appeal of individual consoles has always been decidedly secondary to the games I can play on them. But there is proper magic in how engineers and programmers create the machines that enable our gaming experiences, and Astro’s Playroom helped me to see it.

Perhaps it was inevitable that after such a long time, the conclusion to this story would ring slightly hollow, even rather facile, after all the prior build-up. I’ve been through 13 years of life, but it turns out that Sora got to skip all of that. Kingdom Hearts III plays it extremely safe, ultimately banking on nostalgia and delivering more of the same. Its charm is only skin-deep.

There is real craft on show in Angry Birds Space. The merchandise and spin-offs may be ubiquitous, but the gameplay still feels fresh, with enough new elements to reawaken the addiction for players of the previous versions.

I’ve been playing versions of this game on and off for seven years now, but the fun doesn’t wear off. Splatoon 3 doesn’t offer something different, it offers more: more fashions, more modes, more ways to spend time in its messy, chaotic universe, alone or together. It is delightful to be back.

Eidos Montreal’s near-future thriller presents a visually impressive dystopian playground, but a wonky narrative and some shoddy touches tarnish its potential.

Black Ops II isn't a lazy annual update – it deserves credit for trying to play around with gaming's most winning formula. Yet this engine is showing its age, creaking at times as the jets fly overhead. Its new strategy levels don't need strategy. And the best parts are tweaked copies of what has been before. In the end, Black Ops II doesn't give us meaningful innovation, and it suggests COD's future success will depend on much more than fiddling around with the past.

For the most part, Battlefield 6 is a brilliant return to form, a thrilling, almost operatic shooter experience, which manages to combine deafening combat with tactical subtlety. How it will fit into the modern landscape of hero shooters and battle royale blast-em-ups is anyone’s guess – it deserves a shot, that’s for sure.

Overall, Bad Piggies merits a four-star rating, especially as a relatively small tweak in the number of mechanics dished out for free would reduce the frustration factor.

Two Point Campus isn’t entirely toothless: it pokes gentle fun at university life through a range of lightly cynical announcements about paying tuition fees and assignment extensions. Mainly, though, it is content to focus on the journey of learning and discovery that university is intended to provide, which it achieves in inventive, knockabout style. For all the game’s wry declarations, the one truest to its spirit is also the simplest: “Students are reminded to have the time of their lives.”

Splatoon 2 gets so much right that it’s easy to ignore the occasional baffling ways in which Nintendo has failed to score into an open goal.

This is a stunning-looking game, whether witnessed from the ground or the rooftops – I won’t spoil the cat’s journey, but the developer wrings copious novelty and some impressively creepy moments from this shut-off city in the seven-ish hours it takes to play through. It’s certainly far from twee, with the possible exception of the bucket-lifts that you can ride down from rooftops, paws and ears all poking out over the top – and those are so cute that they’re instantly forgivable.

The Yakuza games have always balanced brutality with tear-jerking sentimentality: it’s a curious mix, but they commit so wholeheartedly to both that they somehow pull it off. It’s no surprise when the final act launches a full-blooded assault on your heartstrings. Yakuza 6 may not be subtle, but few players will be left dry-eyed as the curtain on this tale is finally drawn.

Resistance 3 is fast, furious and entertaining throughout but lacks the uniqueness that would boost it to the very top of the FPS ladder.

Drop Duchy is an extremely clever experiment in game design by combination, and with each new feature you wonder how on earth the team managed to balance all the spinning plates. There’s a reason why the rogue-like and deck-builder genres are so wildly popular: they’re compulsive, challenging and systemically fascinating, and each one adds its own little foibles to the collective rulebook. In the case of Drop Duchy, the foibles are worth the price of entry alone.

Starfield, as with Bethesda’s previous work, requires its player to submit to the spell that is being cast. The rewards for those who can overlook the often awkward delivery of dialogue, bodies that glitch through scenery, the confusion of menus and the flimsy feel of combat are considerable. Because that feeling of electric possibility – when the horn section swells as you touch down on a new planet, stride into the nearest settlement, then pick up whatever threads of story interest you – never wanes.

On the bike, though, Trials Rising is close to flawless, a demanding, absorbing and occasionally rage-inducing game that will serve you up an exciting challenge for as long as you can take it.

Sony has sold millions of its PlayStation VR headsets and until now it’s been tough to recommend one experience as a killer app. Soulful, technically proficient and at times almost tearfully beautiful, No Man’s Sky Beyond is as close as we’ll get.

Final chapter in intriguing narrative adventure series brings back favourite characters, but fails to go out with a bang.

Though its narrative could use more teeth, as a sensory experience GRIS is hard to beat and the most striking looking game of 2018.

It’s difficult to think of a driving game on console that engages you more fully than Project Cars.

Fifa 19 is a true simulation of modern football: brash and bloated yet also slickly professional; sometimes it drives you crazy with its cynicism, others it almost makes you weep with its beauty. And it truly knows how mixed-up and daft it is.

Once you’re in, you will – unlike many of my own early inmates – find it very difficult to escape.

Mortal Kombat X is many things. It is mechanically refined and stylistically muddled; it has a sometimes unpleasantly violent, sometimes charmingly hammy commitment to the traditional fighting game template. It has thrust the series forwards and succeeds in delivering nuance while offering a welcoming genre gateway for inexperienced players.

And bravo to Nintendo for keeping this franchise on the standard DS rather than – for the time being, at least – adding that third dimension.

Madden 16 is an authentic, challenging simulation that explores key facets of the sport in new ways and adds much to the experience in the process.

Pleasantly distinctive and great fun to play, making decent use of the Vita's attributes without ever giving you the impression that they have been shoehorned in.

As I sat late into the night, clicking through strange websites, discovering secret pages and file-sharing boards, reading about online fallouts between made-up strangers, I was reminded so strongly of my teenage late nights on the weird internet that I felt temporarily unmoored. It is an extraordinary feat of scene-setting, and totally unlike anything I’ve ever played before.

Stacking is right up there with the likes of Braid and Limbo as an absolute must-download.

While Arceus may be a sight that leads to sore eyes, this ambitious reboot sets Pokémon on an exciting new trajectory, finally recapturing a lost sense of adventure. What made those initial Pokémon games special was the way that they embodied a childlike spirit of discovery. The problem was that its creators struck gold on the first attempt – and spent decades repeating the same trick. Now, 26 years after I caught my very first Pokémon, the franchise is new again, and that gleeful sense of excitement is back.

Just as the fictional maker of the archive fell under the spell of these records and materials, I too was seduced.

Mortal Kombat 1 is also home to an esoteric, slightly underbaked “Invasions” mode, which injects a dash of RPG-ish grinding – complete with random encounters and variating elemental damage types – to its bread-and-butter brawling mechanics. I found this to be less compelling than either the campaign or the standard multiplayer ladder, but it’s good to see that NetherRealm is, at the very least, considering how they might reinvent the wheel in the future. After all, this is supposed to be a total reimagining of Mortal Kombat oeuvre; a new beginning for all of our twisted, bloodsoaked combatants. I’m happy to have them back in my life, but it’s a shame they didn’t learn a few more tricks during their time away.

There were many moments of beauty and terror during my ascent that left me quietly awestruck. That awe, in the end, was proportional to the hardship.

The Plucky Squire is a moon-shot of a concept, and as the hours go by, it becomes clear that it’s trying to say something truly interesting about the importance of storytelling and the power of narrative. I would recommend seasoned players approach the first few hours with patience, as it takes a hot minute to find its pace. As the game evolves it becomes highly rewarding, even if the controls are a little finicky at times. The Plucky Squire is heartening, funny and impressive to behold: not flawless, but still a treasure of a title.

This hack-and-slasher clings to its Soulsborne heritage too tightly, but does creative things that no other Soulslike until now has managed to pull off.

It’s kind of brave of Firaxis not to just give us XCOM with an asset swap. Midnight Suns is its own thing, combining strategy and soap opera in a nod toward Japanese battle tactics games and the underlying frivolity of the Marvel universe. One thing Firaxis certainly hasn’t done is dumb down turn-based strategy for incoming comic book fans. This is a hugely challenging game, with dozens of hours of play and a narrative that wants to say interesting things about family, identity and sacrifice. Sometimes, it even manages it.

And while the previous Skylander titles no doubt drew plenty of inspiration from these legendary releases (the series has its roots in the old Spyro the Dragon adventure platformers after all), it is Swap Force that really re-captures the magic.

This is a perfect weekend game: cheerful, fun, challenging but not too demanding. It successfully recreates the atmosphere and sense of adventure of the 90s 2D action-adventures that inspired it, and occasionally betters them.

The gaming experience that Tropical Freeze provides may be rich, enjoyable, challenging and frequently hilarious, but it isn't anything conspicuously new.

On the multiplayer servers, players can jump into lighthearted casual races or far more intense open events, where the global community of players bring their own cars – and their own tuning – to the track. But personally, most of my time with Forza Motorsport has been spent all by myself, taking the same left turn over and over again, until I’ve memorised every nuance of the angle. Turn 10 has brought out the obsessive in me. I mean that as a compliment.

Melody of Moominvalley is simple and unchallenging, and also disappointingly short – you can see almost everything within a day’s play. And yet it’s all put together with such care that it’s difficult to begrudge these shortcomings. The licence is everything: spending a short time in a faithfully evoked version of Tove Jansson’s strange and memorable world is worth the entrance fee.

This is perhaps the most fun I’ve had from a pure co-op shooter since Left 4 Dead or the original horde mode in Gears of War – it is so precise, its gunplay so invigorating, its feedback and effects so generous. Everything about this game is ridiculous, including how good it is at what it sets out to do.

The detail in Watch Dogs 2’s world, the colour in its characters and the sheer fun you can have mucking around with its mechanics make for a great, albeit not all-time great, open-world adventure.

Black Ops 6 is the best title in the series for years. It’s still a maniacal first-person shootfest that many players will absolutely detest; no critics of games that glorify the military-industrial complex are going to be converted at this stage. The design team, though, knows its audience and serves them accordingly while doing just enough to move things forward and try some intriguing little segues. I would happily play a whole game in which I could customise the flamboyant safe house to make it more comfortable for my cute little family of spec-ops sociopaths; I would play a whole survival horror adventure set in the world that Emergence concocts. Nothing in this series has ever lingered with me as long as the nuclear bomb explosion in Call of Duty 4 – but these violent delights, I feel, have staying power.

Like Sim City and Civilization before it, it is a sandbox that not only facilitates but also actively nurtures experimentation and creativity. That is much more rare than it sounds, and so much more valuable.

Revelations remains as resolutely rock hard to play as ever, with an emphasis on slow forward motion that makes the 3DS's spongy analogue pad feel all the more frustrating.

It will only take a couple of evenings to reach the game’s corker of an ending, and Verity’s arc is supremely satisfying, as she goes from put-upon victim to master manipulator. Here, the public-school system serves mainly as a way to ingrain inequality, normalise bullying and encourage ruthlessness, and the only way to succeed is to beat the bastards at their own game. When the system is so rotten, what choice do you have?

If you've played a GTA game before, you'll know precisely what to expect gameplay-wise from Saints Row The Third, and that in itself is a major recommendation in a GTA-free year.

The cult 3DS game has been refreshed for smartphones and the combination of card game and horse racing is as weird and addictive as ever.

It’s a simple statement that’s both endearing and heartbreaking. It hints at the thousand real-life moments of grief and joy that served as inspiration for this game. That emotional weight shines through, making Rime a thoroughly rewarding experience.

EA has shown a desire to create a more welcoming Madden for beginners, which is admirable and works as newbies can learn advanced techniques by playing the game rather than studying a manual. Just make sure you don’t leave the stabilisers on for too long. Let the real fun begin.

Those with a less all-consuming enthusiasm for all things on four wheels will find it provides more frustration than enjoyment.

An accomplished but rather tedious and macabre game.

As a complete package, Fifa 15 still rules the roost. But where it matters – on the pitch – PES 2015 is far superior.

Like the real sport, it’s about perseverance and repetition: when the combos started to flow again for me after a few hours, it felt so freeing. I still don’t think there’s a better skating game out there than old-school Tony Hawk’s, even after all this time – and there’s certainly no better time capsule of this pivotal moment in the history of the sport.

If this is your first Fifa game on the new gen consoles then you will be blown away by all the little details that together contribute to an overall experience not too dissimilar to watching football on live television. If you owned Fifa 14 on Xbox One or PS3, Fifa 15 is still a significant upgrade, though maybe not the revolutionary product that it was built up to be.

This short collection of small moments manages to cover a wide range of powerfully relatable emotional highs and lows, beautifully capturing what it’s like to fall in love for the first time.

As Exodus’ story draws to a close and the pace picks up, the world becomes narrower and more directed, and a final chapter takes players to the most dangerous Metro location yet. Here Exodus exposes you to the full horror of the apocalypse, as the experience takes on a surreal, otherworldly quality. It’s an excellent conclusion – haunting, frightening, and desperately sad. Yet even in this dead and desolate place, faint embers of hope still linger.

It is populated with characters reminiscent of Jhonen Vasquez’s illustrations, combined with a gothic and botanical bestiary that calls Hollow Knight to mind. The writing, though, is sparse and unsettling, not quite void of humour but nor silly in the way one might expect. The overall effect is darkly, fascinatingly cute: mall-goth meets folk horror, and the perfect set dressing for elegant, sharp gameplay. Cult of the Lamb has already amassed over a million sales in the first week of its crusade, for good reason. There’s little doubt that the flock will only continue to grow.

Dragon Age 2 has its flaws, but none of them are big enough to obscure the vast, absorbing whole of the game. This Hawke the slayer is definitely not rubbish.

Where many games work to put players in a constant state of distraction, rushing around in an often vain attempt to see everything they offer, Hitman 2 has the confidence to let you stand still, to sample the wine and drink in the atmosphere as you plan your next tiny-yet-devastating move. Indeed, no other action game encourages players to think about how to minimise their violence, and for that alone Hitman 2 stands out among the less mindful killing of its peers.

With so much emphasis on art and audio, there was always a risk of style over substance. But the almost hypnotic blend of rhythmic tapping and gliding create a compelling flow state experience – at least that’s when you manage to master it.

Throughout its running-time, Requiem treads a fine line between poignant and absurd, balancing heartbreaking scenes in which Hugo wrestles with burdens no child should ever bear, with action sequences where you must flee from literal tsunamis of rats. But even at its most ridiculous, Requiem is always earnest in its ideas. Ultimately, it’s a game about living with incurable illness, the constant daily struggle, the threat of outside circumstances making it worse, the importance of hope, and the sad truth that, sometimes, there is none to be had.

Above all, Death Stranding is a sermon on the importance of belief. The power of putting one foot in front of another when hope looks lost, in the belief that things will get better. By working together, a series of small intentional steps can make a difference, and in this often fractured, angry and confusing world; that’s as hopeful as it gets.

It would have been wonderful to see this team’s giant imagination expressed through the subversion of, rather than adherence to, well-worn puzzle platform conventions, but perhaps that is just plain greedy. It is, after all, such a treat to find a gorgeous narrative game that owes nothing to the culturally prevalent aesthetics of Disney, Marvel or Studio Ghibli. While the puzzle construction at the heart of Creaks is formulaic, that should not be a disincentive to give this short, singular experience a try. No time with an Amanita Design game is ever wasted.

Is this the Pro Evo to convince Fifa fans to switch? No. Is it an improvement on the last couple of years' PES incarnations? Yes. Will I be loving it and hating it and still playing it until PES 2014 comes out? Absolutely.

Despite its non-verbal nature (brilliant environmental details, sound design and music tell the story in place of words), Little Nightmares 2 is thought-provoking, tackling the potentially corrupting nature of what is beamed into our homes. If you were to nitpick, you could say that there’s little motivation to revisit the game once it’s run its course – but this gothic nightmare is a delight to inhabit.

It’s as though Remedy challenged itself to cram every preposterous paranormal concept it could think of into a single game. But remarkably, it all manages to hang together, providing a meaty, exciting and utterly unforgettable video game experience.

Death of the Outsider successfully sees out one of its most intriguing lead characters and one of its most powerful villains in a worthwhile adventure. Across six or so hours, this standalone indulgence doesn’t add much truly new, instead relying on tweaks of its existing formula . But it delivers strong missions and an excuse to continue skulking around this fabulous and hugely atmospheric world.

It's a mighty fine game – for my money, the best in the Halo franchise – that deserves to accumulate a cult following. Microsoft should be applauded for having the balls (and the money) to exhume it in such a magnificent manner.

Here is an exquisite gem, the brightest in Ueda’s enviable clutch.

Botany Manor isn’t a long game, but it is immersive and relaxing. There are fantastic, upfront accessibility options for players who struggle with the motion sickness that can often come with first-person gameplay. There’s a classic feel to it: it has touches of Myst, and The Witness, but none of their heaviness. The challenges are never too frustrating. It is a perfect two-night experience, a trip into a surprisingly sunny past, a story sprinkled with secrets that gently connect us to Arabella, but never weigh the player down. Though the story never lets us get too close to her, helping her to complete these measured, sophisticated puzzles is truly satisfying and peaceful.

If you want to be free to make your own way through an intriguing narrative in gorgeous surroundings, this subtle, melancholy game is for you.

Enslaved provides a rollercoaster adventure wrapped up in a brilliantly told story, which sees you grow as attached to the characters as they do to each other.

Given the lack of subtlety Gears titles have shown so far, the way Gears 5 seeds these ideas into a knockabout action-adventure is impressive. Admittedly, few of the ideas are new, but how the Coalition brings them together under the skull-and-cog banner is surprising and refreshing, making this the most well-oiled Gears in a decade.

It's clear that, like Sam, Ubisoft has a plan. They want a Splinter Cell that builds on Conviction but is truer to the series' heritage – and with Blacklist they've achieved that, albeit imperfectly. If the next game can refine the formula and give it a proper plot, then just maybe Ubisoft can deliver a classic the next time Sam is the man with the plan.

It's rarely an enjoyable experience, but within that, Catherine perhaps poses its greatest puzzle of all: does a video game always need to be enjoyable to be worthwhile?

Burnout Paradise isn’t just an interesting piece of history. It feels modern, generous and thrilling, and makes you want to hit the boost button on a Hawker Solo, turn up Avril Lavigne on the in-car radio and plunge through the city all night.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is a well-made and highly entertaining addition to this long, long series. It’s not doing anything radically new with the recipe, but it doesn’t really need to – this is a game about nostalgia, not just for Star Wars but for the Lego games themselves. These games have always sought to conjure our favourite family movie franchises as we choose to remember them, shorn of all the boring, indulgent and problematic bits. My god, even The Phantom Menace is bearable here. For this feat alone, the game deserves the attention of fans and families throughout the galaxy.

A game as unexpected and compelling in its message as in its moment-to-moment challenge.

Torment: Tides of Numenera is more than a nostalgic homage to Planescape: Torment – its own innovations will mark the genre as much as its spiritual predecessor did.